What reporting has Lisa Noelle Voldeng published about William Sascha Riley and what sources does she cite?
Executive summary
Lisa Noelle Voldeng published a long Substack post in late 2025 that released six unredacted audio recordings of interviews she says she conducted with a man identified as William “Sascha” (or Sascha Barrows) Riley and framed him as an alleged Epstein survivor; Voldeng says the phone interviews took place between July 19 and July 24, 2025 and she posted the material on her Substack page titled “Don’t Worry, Boys are Hard to Find” [1] [2]. Her reporting centers on those interview tapes as primary material and she says she contacted allies, church, police and government officials after first speaking to Riley, while independent commentators and mainstream outlets note the claims remain unverified and are not corroborated by the unsealed Epstein files or official investigations to date [3] [4] [1].
1. What Voldeng published: unredacted tapes and a named subject
Voldeng’s principal public product is a Substack post released November 23, 2025 that included six unredacted audio files of her interviews with a man she identifies as Sascha Barrows Riley (also reported as William Sascha Riley), accompanied by narrative framing asserting Riley’s adoption, military service, and allegations tying his adoptive father to Jeffrey Epstein’s network [2] [5].
2. The timeline and how Voldeng says she gathered the material
Voldeng states she conducted phone interviews with Riley from July 19 to July 24, 2025 and subsequently published the recordings on Substack, claiming she had also reached out selectively to allies, church representatives, police and government officials as part of her follow-up and warnings after the first contact [4] [1] [3].
3. Key factual claims in Voldeng’s reporting
In her published account Voldeng presents Riley as a decorated Iraq War veteran who says he was adopted in 1975 by a man he names William “Bill” Kyle Riley, whom he alleges worked as a pilot and private investigator for Epstein and participated in trafficking; Voldeng’s post and the audio are the locus for those assertions [2] [5].
4. What Voldeng cites as evidence and corroboration
The most concrete material Voldeng provides are the audio interviews themselves — the raw recordings she uploaded to Substack — and her contemporaneous account of contacting officials and allies after the interviews; reporting about her post also indicates she points to public-record threads and independent researchers’ compilations as supplemental context, though the specifics of documentary corroboration in her post are not exhaustively detailed in the sources provided [3] [5].
5. How other outlets and analysts have treated Voldeng’s work
Mainstream outlets and aggregators have summarized Voldeng’s publication while cautioning the tapes and allegations remain unverified and not confirmed by courts or the unsealed Epstein files; independent writers and podcasters have dug into details, some endorsing elements of the record and others, like analysis on Substack and podcasts, openly questioning the veracity of parts or all of the narrative [4] [1] [6] [2].
6. Gaps, disputes, and the limits of the published sourcing
Reporting on Voldeng’s material makes clear that her published evidence rests primarily on the audio interviews and her claimed contemporaneous contacts; multiple outlets note there is no independent confirmation in court records or the Department of Justice’s unsealed Epstein materials as of early 2026, and critics have flagged missing documentary links and inconsistencies that Voldeng has not publicly resolved in the pieces cited here [1] [4] [2].
7. Why this matters and how to weigh Voldeng’s reporting
Voldeng’s release of firsthand audio is notable because primary-source recordings can be powerful, but responsible assessment requires corroboration beyond a single interviewer’s tapes — the available coverage shows both researchers who find public-record traces consistent with some of Voldeng’s contours and analysts who urge skepticism until documentary or legal corroboration appears [5] [2].